


The Outbreak

by DarkPhoenix101



Category: Bramwell (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post Season 4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 08:03:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10760115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkPhoenix101/pseuds/DarkPhoenix101
Summary: It's been nearly a year since Eleanor Bramwell left the Thrift and all is not well at the charity hospital





	The Outbreak

Disclaimer: Eleanor Bramwell and all characters and places associated with the Bramwell series are the creation of Lucy Gannon and copyright to Carlton Television. This fanfic is entirely for fun and no money is being made

Chapter 1: A Death in the Night

In the Main Surgical Ward of the Thrift Infirmary, the patients were settling down for the night. Most slept restlessly, tossing under the hospital blankets, some muttering to themselves in laudanum induced dreams. In the far corner of the ward however, all was still, the two figures that occupied it as motionless as statues.

The middle aged man in the bed lay utterly still in spite of the heavy perspiration clinging to his flushed face. The woman sitting in the chair by his bed watched him quietly, waiting. The only sound either made was the man’s uneven raspy breathing.

His breathing stopped suddenly, there was a rattling gasp, and then he fell silent. The woman leaned forward, feeling at the man’s wrist for a pulse then gently raising one of his eyelids.

Rising slowly to her feet, Nurse Ethel Carr smoothed down the skirts of her uniform. She turned away from the bed, walking towards the Ward doors. Despite moving quietly to avoid waking the other patients, anger bristled from every inch of her starched figure.

Striding across the main hallway she burst into the office, not even bothering to knock.

“Nurse Carr, we are in a meeting!”

The man who spoke was Doctor Joe Marsham, the Thrift’s Senior Physician, a man Ethel had once been fond of despite her better judgement but whom she now thoroughly loathed. He was one of three people seated around the table, a table on which she noted with a sniff of disapproval rested a nearly empty Champagne bottle and three glasses. The other two were an elderly man with curly white hair and sideburns and a still attractive woman in late middle age.

The man was John Barclay, a wealthy industrialist who was the Thrift’s most important sponsor and someone Ethel privately thought was a sanctimonious hypocrite. As for the woman, she was a widow called Lucy Bruce who for nearly two years now had been the Thrift’s Administrator.

Of all of them, Mrs Bruce was the one Nurse Carr most despised. Ever since her arrival she had been a thorn in Ethel’s side, with her constant penny pinching and interference in medical matters of which she knew nothing.

Closing the office door behind her, Ethel glanced briefly at each of the room’s occupants, scarcely even trying to hide the contempt in which she held all three of them.

“Mister Wilson died a few minutes ago.”

She made the announcement without preamble, quietly waiting for a response.

“Well that’s hardly a surprise,” Marsham said dismissively. “With acute peritonitis and septicaemia it was only a matter of time.”

“That’s the fifth death this week,” Ethel reminded him. “And the fourteenth this month!”

“I can count, thank you!”

“So can the patients and the people in the neighbourhood,” Ethel said softly. “They were unhappy enough, what with Doctor Bramwell leaving, then Mrs Bruce charging the patients for treatment. Now with all these deaths after surgery there’s a lot of talk going round. People are starting to think they’d be better off not coming here at all!”

John Barclay and Lucy Bruce glanced nervously at each other at the mention of Eleanor Bramwell. Ever since her dismissal from the Thrift, mentioning the clinic’s founder by name had become something of a taboo. Marsham sprang to his feet however, positively radiating fury.

“If you’ve been behind any of that talk Nurse Carr, then…”

“It’s not me you should be worrying about, Doctor,” Ethel interrupted. “The Area Medical Officer is already asking questions. Unless this is sorted out soon, this hospital will be closed down!”

“Nurse Carr!” Lucy Bruce spoke for the first time, attempting to adopt a conciliatory tone. “Doctor Marsham is doing his very best.”

“Well it’s not nearly good enough, then,” Ethel responded. “This has been going on for six months and it’s getting worse all the time.” She hesitated, taking as deep a breath as her corset would allow before making her next comment. “Nothing like this ever happened when Doctor Bramwell was running things.”

“And I suppose you think Doctor Bramwell could do better than I could?” Marsham sneered.

Ethel snorted. “She could hardly do worse, could she?”

“Now you listen here, Nurse!” Doctor Marsham spoke icily. “I know you don’t think I could ever fill Eleanor Bramwell’s shoes, but the fact is I am the Senior Physician here, not her, and it’s high time you accepted that!”

“More the pity she’s not,” Ethel shot back, ignoring Marsham’s last few words. “And as for filling her shoes you couldn’t even come close, not even if your feet were ten times as big!”

“Nurse Carr, please!”

This time there was unmistakable anger in Lucy Bruce’s voice, but Ethel Carr ignored it as she turned to face the Thrift’s Administrator.

“I’m sorry Mrs Bruce, but it has to be said. In the four and a half years Doctor Bramwell was running the Thrift we rarely had any cases of infection after surgery, only once in a blue moon. Then almost as soon as she leaves our surgical cases start dying like flies! Maybe you should just think about that for a bit!”

With that, Ethel Carr turned on her heel and marched to the door, pausing as her hand rested on the latch.

“I’m going home now. I should have gone off duty more than an hour ago.”

Opening the door she walked through and shut it behind her, ignoring Marsham and Bruce’s demands for her to come back.

As Ethel walked away she reflected that her relations with the Senior Physician and the Thrift Administrator had been frosty ever since Eleanor Bramwell’s dismissal, but this was the first time things had flared into open hostility. She knew she might very well suffer as a result of what she had said tonight, maybe even be dismissed herself, but didn’t really care.

Ethel took a crumpled letter from the pocket of her uniform, and glanced again at the words from her fiancée she had read nearly a hundred times. Sergeant Nelson Reid had been wounded fighting the Boer in South Africa and was being shipped back to England. Fortunately the injury was not life threatening, but he had been left with a permanent limp, and in view of that and his age he was being invalided out of the army.

He and Ethel had already agreed that they would marry within a month of his return. And tonight Ethel came to another decision; she would resign as soon as Nelson was back. If Eleanor Bramwell had still been running the Thrift Ethel might have stayed on, even after her wedding, but her heart was no longer in the work. The sooner she left the better.

Collecting her cloak, Ethel quietly left the building and made her way home.


End file.
